Tucker Carlson Tonight has consistently been one of the most popular shows on cable. In Canada, Egale is asking the federal regulator to ban Fox News over Carlson’s statements about transgender people.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Source: Wikicommons
In an open letter to the CRTC, a Canadian 2SLGBTQI+ advocacy group is asking for the government’s broadcast regulator to ban Fox News from the airwaves.
Egale, a group focused on LGBTQ+ people and issues in Canada, put out an open letter after the organization was featured on Tucker Carlson Tonight – which has repeatedly been rated as the most popular cable news program in the United States.
The organization is asking the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to take Carlson and Fox News off the air.
“Last week, Egale Canada and a prominent Canadian leader for trans rights and inclusion were featured on the infamously incendiary Tucker Carlson Tonight program on the American Fox News Channel,” Helen Kennedy, Egale Canada’s executive director, wrote in the open letter. “The coverage aimed to provoke hatred and violence against 2SLGBTQI communities, particularly those who are Two Spirit, trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming (2STNBGN).”
Egale Canada is calling on @CRTCeng to begin public consultations on the removal of Fox News from the list of non-Canadian programming authorized for distribution in Canada.
— Egale Canada (@egalecanada) April 4, 2023
Read our open letter to the CRTC: https://t.co/mhBuyUcHG9 pic.twitter.com/5huroyt78n
Egale says the program is in “clear violation” of Canada’s broadcast standards and has “no place on Canadian broadcasting networks.” They accuse Carlson of promoting an image of transgender people as “violent and dangerous including the claim that trans people are “targeting” Christians.
“To position trans people in existential opposition to Christianity is an incitement of violence against trans people that is plain to any viewer. The segment also contained a range of other malicious misinformation about 2STNBGN people, including that trans people are given preferential treatment in employment and other opportunities.
“This is clearly an attempt to stoke resentment against 2STNBGN people. ”
Egale’s name and logo were used by Carlson in a March segment that relates to another open letter drawing attention to an “exponential rise” in anti-LGBTQ, hate-fueled movements and protests.
Carlson told his viewers that was a lie.
“In Canada, a taxpayer-funded trans rights organization put out a statement that ignored the murder of the children in Nashville entirely and instead claimed that there has been an ‘exponential rise in anti-trans violence,’” he told the audience.
“That is a lie. It's a provable lie, and in fact, the opposite is true. We seem to be watching the rise of trans-terrorism. The man who tried to murder Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, identified as a ‘trans gamer girl.’ The man who shot up a nightclub in Colorado in this past November and murdered five people identified as non-binary, and now this and there could be more.”
One Fox News pundit has been far from the only voice adding to this categorization of transgender people as dangerous and potentially violent – with a particular emphasis placed on accused mass shooters who also identify as transgender. While the exact number of non-cisgender mass shooters is unknown, organizations cited by both Reuters and Newsweek note an extremely low percentage of mass casualty events carried out by transgender-identifying individuals.
According to Egale, the backlash against them after the mention on Carlson’s program was swift.
There were “calls to our office, email, they slammed our social media channels,” said Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale.
Calling the statements “vile” and “vitriolic,” she echoed the open letter and accused Carlson of “inciting violence against trans people.”
“We didn't know we were on Fox News until our social media exploded with hate,” Kennedy told the Canadian Anti-Hate Network during an interview, “which is when we discovered we had been featured on a segment that was pretty malicious and anti-trans.”
After the segment aired, Egale’s research found that numerous cable packages include and feature Fox among the offered channels.
The CRTC maintains a list of non-Canadian programming services and stations authorized for distribution in the country. Fox News and two other Fox branded channels are on the list. Removing their approved status would restrict fox news from legally appearing on Canadian airwaves, television, radio or internet.
Recent high-profile removals from the list include Russia Today and Russia Today France in March 2022. Both remain easily accessible online.
Carlson regularly features transgender people as the subject of his segments. He also takes aim at Canada with always provocative and sometimes bizarre comments about the country. A recent commercial of an upcoming documentary alleged to make a case for the United States liberating Canada from the yoke of its current tyrannical government.
The popular news show regularly features transgender issues and people as subjects on his show.
During a past discussion with Wilfred Reilly in 2021, Carlson called transgender people a “challenge to the perpetuation of the species.”
More recently, when discussing the mass shooting at a Nashville school by Audrey Hale in March, a transgender man, Carlson laid the blame for the shooter’s actions on the entire transgender community.
“Transgenderists hate Christians above all because Christians refused to join every other liar in our society and proclaim that transgenderists are Gods with the power to change nature itself,” he said.
“These are sex crimes,” Carlson told his audience during a segment about transgender children,” and the people committing them should be punished. Now, try and say that out loud anywhere but on Fox News. You can't. Why can't you? Because it's true, that's why. You can't say the true things.
“You can claim that the Earth is flat and no one gets exercised. But when you start saying things like "All lives matter" or "Sexualizing my children is a crime and if you keep it up, I'm going to hurt you because I am the dad," -- say that? You're done.”
During the same broadcast, he also told parents it was their “moral duty” to protect kids from a “society that hates children.” Hospitals providing care to transgender children are committing “sex crimes,” viewers heard.
“This is an attack on your children and you should fight back."
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